Page 32 of Claimed By the Mothman (Greymarket Towers #1)

T he ache in Sig’s chest wouldn’t let him sleep.

Instead, he went to his workbench.

The tools were familiar, worn smooth by claw and habit. Their edges glinted in low light. The scent of cut wood, old varnish, and oiled metal filled the apartment like a comfort spell. It was the only place he still trusted his hands.

He told himself it was just to keep busy, just something to do until the night passed him by.

But the figure in his hands had unfurled unconsciously and now had her tilt of chin. Her posture. The curve of her shoulders. She was in his hands now, and it made the even ache worse.

One claw slowly traced the unfinished line of her back. Even in wood, touching this part of her, nearly undid him.

He closed his eyes and tried to breathe through the want. After a moment, he reached for a fine blade to trace the lines of her hair.

A pulse hit him, hot and bright and ruthless, and he dropped the blade with a gasp. The sensation cracked through him, and he stumbled to standing, his chair toppling behind him. He grasped the edge of the worktable, and the wood cracked beneath his palm with a vicious groan.

Her scent—the scent of her arousal—was in his nostrils, everywhere, wrapping around him like steam. The mark on his abdomen blazed with heat, and his antennae snapped forward, searching the air for her.

She was touching herself. He knew it, only because his body had already answered before his mind caught up. His length had slipped free of its sheath—thick, dark with blood, flushed almost black with want.

Sig grunted, low and hoarse and wrecked. Without thought, he wrenched his trousers open, wrapped a hand around himself, and began to stroke, roughly, desperately, frantically.

The bond sizzled between them. The air shimmered. Sig let his head fall back—and felt her move beneath him.

Her hand. Her rhythm. The trembling stutter of her thighs. The soft, shattered whimpers she didn’t even know she was making. Every flick of her fingers lit up his skin like fire. Every gasp dropped like a stone into his gut. Every circle of her clit was a spark against his soul.

He pumped faster. His wings trembled and arched wide, twitching with the desperate need to fly to her. A clacking trill ripped from his throat, ragged and low. His whole body screamed: Go to her. Take her. Finish it.

The scent of her slick was everywhere now, filling his lungs, coating his skin, soaking into the bond.And when her pleasure crested and broke over her, it tore through him like a meteor crashing to Earth.

He roared, shattering through his apartment and making the walls tremble. Dust drifted from the ceiling like ash. His wings flapped in his own release as his seed spilled from him in a savage pulse.

Another wave of her pleasure crashed through the bond. She was coming again, and he felt every breath of it, and gods help him, he wanted her to keep going, keep fracturing, for her to fall apart with his name on her lips.

Desperately, Sig wrapped his hand around his cock again. The skin was almost too sensitive to touch, but he needed this. Needed to ride the pleasure together with her, as the half-formed bond quivered and keened between them.

His claspers unfurled and flexed, twitching at the air like they could reach her and hold her there while he fucked her through every last tremor. He was high on her, frantic and vibrating with need.

"More," he gasped, the words spilling from his lips without thought as he pumped himself. "Do not stop, please—Nell—do not stop.”

Her third orgasm slammed into him and the bond dragged him down, wrapping tight, pulsing hot, sparking along every nerve like lightning shot straight into his soul.

His body arched and he spilled again in thick, molten ribbons.

His hips bucked wildly, rhythm broken. His wings snapped open and stayed open, trembling. Shaking. Surrendered.

One final echo, the last wave of her pleasure, rang through him and he seized, collapsing to the floor as if he had been struck.

Silence settled. Sig’s breath scraped in his throat as sweat pooled beneath him, as he felt the wetness of his pleasure start to cool on his body.

His length, now raw and drained. twitched one last time before it slowly began to retract.

He curled on the floor, gasping, trousers twisted about his ankles.

She was soft now, floating and dazed in her afterglow.

But Sig—Sig was a live wire stretched too tight, humming with everything unsaid and unmet.

His skin ached with her echo. The bond still thrummed between them, charged and unresolved, and now every part of him trembled with the need for conclusion, for clarity, for contact.

“I cannot…” he clicked softly. To the room. To the floorboards. To the building itself. “I cannot bear this.”

He stood, stepping from his trousers and kicking them from him like the last pretense of patience.

Naked, unguarded, he staggered to the balcony doors.

His hand closed around the handle and the wind met him as if summoned, cool and electric.

It kissed the sweat on his brow, whispered across the glowing ridge at his abdomen, dull now, but aching to flare again.

His wings trembled at his back, unfurling not with urgency, and he leapt. The night opened around him and Greymarket fell away, a blur of brick and breath and light, and he circled once. The motion soothed nothing, but he needed it.

There. Her balcony. The one with the curtains she never quite remembered to close all the way. The one that had begun to smell like her.

He dropped low, too fast, and hit the stone hard, talons gouging into the concrete and knees bending to take the force. He was shaking, all over now, wings still straining open as if trying to hold something at bay.

His hand reached for the door. There was no ritual left in him, no language that could wrap around this thing curling inside his chest.

Before his claws could close around the handle, the door opened… as if it had been waiting for just this moment.